


Control & Liberty

by DictionaryWrites



Series: J/W Fics [3]
Category: Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Blindfolds, Bondage, Coming Untouched, Declarations Of Love, Dom/sub, Fluff, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, POV Jeeves, Power Dynamics, Power Exchange, Praise Kink, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 21:05:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17732657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: I believe it was in Descartes’ Discourse on Method that he stated, “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”Jeeves takes Bertie through a demonstration of self-control.





	Control & Liberty

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a [very old prompt](https://ohyoudosaydoyou.livejournal.com/887.html) on the old kink meme! _Bertie is tied to a chair while Jeeves whispers naughty things in his ear...no touching involved._

I believe it was in Descartes’ _Discourse on Method_ that he stated, “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.” This is an unfortunate fact one must come to terms with, if one is to live one’s life: we are each our own man, our own island, and although we might carefully influence a situation, although we might make our judgement of it what we will, and do our best to facilitate an appropriate solution, there is naught we might truly and _utterly_ command outside our own selves.

With that said…

I sipped delicately at my glass of water, and examined the shape of my employer, Mr Bertram Wooster. For quite some time, I had enjoyed my position as Mr Wooster’s gentleman’s _gentleman_ , as his valet; for some shorter period, although not a negligible one, I had enjoyed my position as something slightly more.

There were certain games we played, Mr Wooster and I. There were certain improprieties, indiscretions, that were exchanged between us in the privacy offered behind closed doors, and I considered myself lucky indeed. My employer was a handsome young gentleman, some seven years my junior, and even as I entered his service, I was aware he would require a firm, guiding hand, and but for occasional periods of ill-advised rebellion, Mr Wooster assented to good counsel.

Today’s lesson was in good conduct: we would be exploring today the crucial education as to Mr Wooster’s self-control and composure, which was often not what it perhaps ought be for a gentleman of his standing. He was performing most impressively thus far, and I looked down upon him with a thoughtful expression drawing at my own countenance, taking him in.

In the warmth of the kitchen, the small table set slightly out of the way, Mr Wooster was sitting upon one of the chairs. He wore not a stitch of clothing, although I had placed a small towel at his feet to protect his soles from the biting cool of the floor, and his hands were tied neatly at the small of his back. I had tied them with a neat length of fine rope, and it had pleased the young master no end: a healthy flush had rendered itself in his cheeks, and he had smiled softly as he had looked at me. When I had tied the blindfold over his eyes, ten minutes or so previous, he had stiffened momentarily, but then he had relaxed once more.

There was something intoxicating, in the amount of trust, at times, Mr Wooster imparted upon me. He had his moments of doubt, and these moments certainly wounded my ego at times, but there were other, heart-stopping moments where I was certain, to my very bones, that were I to advise Mr Wooster to step into an abyss, not even bothering to assure him I would catch him before he fell, he would obey me. This was one of those moments of that curious surety, and I watched him with care as he sat in his place.

Mr Wooster, regrettably, was one with a tendency to fidget. He did not fare well in being made to sit still for long periods of time, or even _short_ periods of time: I had seen him drum his fingers, bounce his knees, tap his feet, even – oh horror – _tear tissue_ in his lap, leaving behind him the anxious snow of paper on the seat as he did his best to occupy his naturally restless hands.

And yet now, Mr Wooster was remarkably still. His soles rested on the floor and remained there, only shifting occasionally as he slightly curled and uncurled his toes; his breathing was cultivatedly measured, and I could hear the effort he was taking to retain the rhythm of his inhalations and exhalations. Sometimes, I could see his lips move silently as he counted the interval between his breaths.

His erection, which had been prominent as a result of my ministrations in binding him (it might be said that I, unable to resist the temptation of the young master’s clean, graceful neck, had brushed my lips over the pale skin, and Mr Wooster had _gasped_ , but released no other exclamation), had scarcely flagged in the intervening time, and I looked at the way it rested hard against my master’s flat belly, its hood folded neatly back, wet at its head and with the slightest white pearl gathering there.

“You recall our arrangement?” I asked quietly, and I saw his nostrils flare as he inhaled, his face turning slightly toward me. He said nothing. He was not to speak – Mr Wooster struggled very hard in the times when he was not permitted to speak, and I had no doubt he was grappling with his instinct to blunder through some nonsensical talk, simply to fill the silence of the room. Mr Wooster fared ill in silence, and yet fare he did now, at my instruction. I felt somewhat warm beneath my collar. “I will not touch you.” He exhaled softly. “You will not speak, Mr Wooster; you will not struggle.”

Another moment’s silence, and I said, “You enjoy this, I suppose. Being held at my mercy.”

Mr Wooster’s corpus stiffened, his muscles tensing beneath his skin, and I looked at him appraisingly. He was a fellow of unfortunately inelegant form: his limbs, gangling and thin, lent themselves ill to the natural grace of a man befitting his station, and he struggled to conduct himself with any sense of authority, owing to the way in which he had been browbeaten by domineering aunts and demanding friends since he was little more than a boy. The very point of _command_ was not one he excelled in sporting, and often, I knew, this fact made him melancholy beyond measure in the worry that, in the event one of his cousins predeceased him, he might be “saddled” with the peerage.

He was handsome, of course. Often, I had heard young women remarking on his pleasing physiognomy: possessed of astonishingly blue eyes, the colour of forget-me-nots in spring sunshine, Mr Wooster also had a stark, pink cupid’s bow at his mouth, paired with an aristocratic nose. Although his chin was sharp, his cheekbones overtly angular, and his face often expressive to the point of appearing cartoonish, he was inescapably well-formed of feature. His hair, which was a soft brown, naturally fell into a handsome tousle atop his head, and he was possessed of fulsome, golden lashes that only served to draw more notice to his eyes.

He was beautiful, in short, and – as I had mused before – much like some Greek hero in his beauty.

“It offers you some satisfaction, I believe,” I continued, setting my glass upon the side of the table and stepping slowly forth. “That you should be bound before my charge, to be guided by hand… And unclad. Does that bring you pleasure, sir, that I should see you so unadorned, with naught to lend you modesty?” Mr Wooster inhaled, shakily, and I was aware of his member twitching slightly in his lap. The pearl of liquid there had blossomed, and dripped slowly from his crown, falling against his thigh and making him almost jolt in his place before he recalled himself. “I am quite sure it does. Often, sir, I have thought you a sybarite, but equally, I feel, you glean some pleasure in the _denial_ of sensuous pleasure. Is that not so?”

I stepped closer, that I might almost brush his knee as I passed him by, and I saw him shiver as a flower in the morning breeze, his petals the hyacinthine curls that so haloed his handsome head. I was beside him now, looking down upon him, and I could see the way Mr Wooster strained against his natural inclination, aching to lean his head toward me, as so often he did in these moments of private delectation.

“You ache for these moments, don’t you? That you might abnegate, so _solemnly_ , the pleasure you desperately crave?” Mr Wooster, I surmised, kept losing count of his breaths, for regularly his intake was shorter than his outtake, or vice versa, and I envisioned his eyes screwing tightly shut beneath the dark cloth of the blindfold. Behind his back, I could see his hands tightened into fists, that he not fiddle with his bindings. It was time, I mused, to, as one might say, raise the stakes. “And how comely you look in the process,” I said softly, and Mr Wooster _gasped_.

In moments like these, I had discovered, Mr Wooster’s concupiscent weakness was not, as it was for many men, in being degraded or insulted; nor indeed were his knees rendered weak as jelly in the face of filthy words or oaths; nor, again, was he especially weak to eroticized threats or promises. Certainly, all these choice methodologies had some effect upon him, and would affect him to pleasure, but they did not make him shudder and tremble in his place, did not paint the back of his eyelids with bright sparks and stars, did not make him weak at the knees in his desperate desire.

No, in order to draw Mr Wooster to the _greatest_ heights in these games of carnal pleasure, one had only to give him the barest compliment. To praise his erudition and his mind made him gasp and cry out; to praise his skill or his charm made him squirm in his place; to praise his physicality was to gratify him beyond measure.

And such was the happy goal of the evening’s understanding – he would not speak, would not jump or shudder, and I would not touch him. These three conditions were not to say he might not reach _some_ level of gratification nonetheless.

“You don’t disagree, I hope?” I asked, my voice quiet as I leaned down, that I might be closer to him, my breath set to ghost against the shell of my master’s ear, all the better to see him try not to shudder in his place. “For, if I might say, sir, you are a figure of most _sightly_ charms. I have noticed them myself.” Bound in his place, he moved nonetheless, and I watched his knees move just slightly farther apart, his member straining against his belly. “Often I have noted and admired the figure you cut when silhouetted against the shine of the sun. How lovely a lustre lingers on your crown, leaving you as radiant as some adherent of Apollo, and how lovely you look, sir, a statue given life.”

Mr Wooster was somewhat weak to poetry. In quoting it, he often forgot his place on the line, or paraphrased things in the clumsiest manner possible, but it might be said he had a not insubstantial love of the pastoral, and often, he set eagerly to the plate when a woodland walk was set upon the table, enthused at the prospect of passing a fine hour walking on sun-dappled paths, appreciating both flora and fauna, misquoting no small number of poets in the process; equally, he read books of love poems with a small smile on his face, a most _endearing_ smile, at that.

Now, he quivered under the effects of my oration as I were actually touching him with my words, his hips shuddering as he did his best to prevent himself from thrusting against the air itself, and I allowed myself a small smile.

“In aspect, sir, you are a marvel,” I continued. “How rosy is the flush that adorns you where cloth does not: how sweet is the glow in your cheeks, the heat that marks your chest, and why, at your loin, I fancy I see the pink of some precious flower, made wet with the morning dew—”

Mr Wooster moaned.

The noise drew itself up from the base of his throat, deeper than his ordinary light tenor called for, and I watched the way he seemed to cringe at having made it, the _shame_ that seemed to show about his mouth, his trembling shoulders. Quite unbidden, the noise had sounded, and I could see the slight twitch of his length, see the _blink_ of it as a little more of his seed dripped against his thigh.

“Are you so affected, sir?” I asked, imparting the scantest note of scandal into my tone, and I watched him shiver, his teeth gritting as he held back some response, or perhaps just a whimper of noise; I watched, spellbound, at the exaggerated shift of his Adam’s apple in his throat as he swallowed it back. “I confess, I find myself affected merely at the image of you.”

Mr Wooster gasped, his head tipping back by half an inch. It was a ragged sound, and it dragged at my own composure: with fervour, I imagined grasping at the back of my master’s hair, dragging him into a kiss sure to bruise his perfect mouth, and to worship his form with my lips, to deliver a line of adoration from his mouth down to his knees, and see him writhe beneath it.

But no. No, here I had a goal for which to strive.

“It affects _me_ ,” I confessed, leaning in so close that my nose _almost_ , but not quite, brushed his skin, and he released a choked keen, cut off before it could reach its natural completion. “How astounding you look in this moment, what a wonder you are to behold. Why, I should have you like this always, if I could, that I might admire the wonder of your form, but oh, I could not _bear_ to keep you silent. No, sir: these forays into erotic oaths of quietude aside, I love your voice. How mellifluous are your tones, and how wonderful is your speech, how it warms my very heart to hear you say my name.”

His breathing was growing faster now, and he _was_ struggling to keep himself still. I felt a glow of pride in my chest, warm and airy, that he should be so dedicated to this evening’s cause, that he should commit himself so entirely to a task to which he was not naturally inclined.

“And how kind, sir, is your heart,” I murmured, leaning to breathe at the back of his neck and see him shudder, to see the little hairs there stand to attention under the blow of warm air. “How deeply do you show your concerns for others, and how _admirable_ do I find the quality: you are a natural noble, sir, the _preux chevalier_ to which you do your best to attain the level of, and I should forgive your every flaw, if I might only find them.”

That _was_ an exaggeration, as is so often the way in one’s poetic indulgences, but he choked on his very next breath, and I took my chance at our natural finale: “Sir,” I said. “I love you.”

And oh, what a sight.

I watched at the way his member _jerked_ against his belly, his sac drawn up tightly beneath the length as it let forth its emission, the spatter landing pearly-white at Mr Wooster’s belly and on the side of his thigh, and the _noise_ he made was nothing short of captivating, a sort of pleasured whine.

Smiling, I reached up and neatly untied the blindfold, watching the aftershocks wrench through my master’s flat belly, and was astonished to find his eyes wet beneath the cloth. Immediately, I dropped to my knees beside him, moving to untie his hands, and I watched as he heaved in a breath, filling his lungs.

“Oh, _Reg_ ,” he said plaintively, and he threw his arms around my neck.

“Bertram,” I said softly, and I allowed my hands to draw about him, uncaring of the wetness threatening to stain my shirt front: with one hand, I cupped the back of his handsome head, and my other splayed upon the unsullied surface of his back. He all but clambered onto me, and I felt a thrum of alarm and guilt burn within me as I held him, not yet daring to stand. “What is the matter? Did you not—?”

“No, no, Reg, dash it all, it was lovely,” he gasped out, his faced crammed against my breast, his nose seeming intent to insinuate itself amidst the organs behind my ribcage. “I just— _Gosh_. That was _hard_ , I was so certain I would break, my composure failed me further with every passing second, and I felt rather as one of those fellows who is on the side of a mountain, you know, and he kicks a little stone or what have you, and suddenly there’s a few others of the little blighters tumbling down about his head, and then a boulder, and he knows that the whole thing is going to come down on his head, but what can he do, but retain the stiff upper lip, what? Oh, I should have hated to _disappoint_ you, Reg—”

“Bertram, you do _not_ ,” I said sternly, and I allowed my lips to press against the top of his head, touching through the soft hair there, feeling it tickle my nose. And yet how lovely a sentiment, how open-hearted his confession. Not for the first time, I wondered as to how _deeply_ he felt, how keenly ran his emotions, scoring lines upon his heart. “You did beautifully.”

He leaned back, and he looked at me, his eyes shining, his lips parted, and he was a _masterpiece_ , a triumph—

“You didn’t really mean that, did you?” he asked softly. “About the old, er, well, about—”

“I meant it,” I said, my tone intended to assure as I gently cupped one of his cheeks beneath my palm.

“Every line? Even the one about me, er, not having flaws and what-not?”

“Well,” I said, and he smiled, the expression as sun breaking through the cloud. I was dazzled by its radiance, and for a moment, my tongue was caught still on the bed of my mouth.

“Oh, good,” he mumbled, seeming, for some reason, relieved. “Because— Well, this might sound foolish, but I suppose if I weren’t flawed from head to toe, you wouldn’t see any use to be here anymore, eh? Not that you’d abandon the old Wooster corpus, but… You know, once the man has whittled the sculpture down, he doesn’t carry it about in his pocket for eternity, looking at it from time to time.”

“I would,” I said tenderly. His eyes widened, his mouth opening further, his jaw dropping.

“ _Really_?”

“No.” He laughed, and he kissed me, so sweetly and so earnestly that my head _spun_ , a dizziness overtaking me, and I felt my own mouth smile as I drew back from him. “I took the liberty of drawing us a bath,” I said.

“Oh, you’re a _marvel_ , Reg,” he mumbled, and I caught him underneath the back of his knees, lifting him clean from the chair. He loved it, he had professed before, when I carried him, and he wound his arms about my neck, laying his head on my breast. “I do love you dearly, old thing.”

“And I you,” I said, and he looked up at me besottedly, his expression a mask of doting adoration. I was aware, for better or worse, that my eyes no doubt contained that same spark of inescapable infatuation, that to my own lips was an equally loving smile. There is nothing _absolutely_ within our power, outside ourselves—

But for what others give us, of course.

And I would give this man _everything_ , as he gave me just the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). Requests always open. I die over these two, so.


End file.
